Archive for the ‘update’ Category

Hey folks. I just found out that the vast majority of my T-shirts are now on clearance sale over at Shark Robot. So, there’s no time like the present to pick one up. Treat yourself or someone you know who is sadly lacking in awesome witty t-shirts to a fine screen-printed witticism this holiday season. They may not be around much longer.

You may be wondering why I seemingly spontaneously dropped the comic for about a month. Yes, I had several events to go to. Yes, I had and still have a fair bit of paid work to catch up on. In the end, the updates stopped because this comic became intrinsically tied to a very serious bout of depression. I’m better now, for the most part.

It may not look like it just now, but the ENTIRE WEBSITE is currently under construction. Unfortunately, like those guys you see on the side of the road, it’s taking longer than anticipated. Originally the new site was supposed to go live Tuesday and everything would be rolling along unimpeded. Unfortunately, my coding team is in the middle of a family emergency right now, and so it’s looking like the new site will go live on the 2nd. My apologies to you guys for whatever disruptions this may have caused in your regular reading cycle. If you guys could do me a big favor and send some good vibes/prayers/whatever toward my code team, it’d mean a lot to me and to them. Life has this terrible reputation for being a bitch at the best of times. God knows we all could use a few warm wishes now and again.

In less dire news, Baltimore Comic Con was amazing last weekend! Thank you to everyone who came by my table and stopped to talk with me. I really do like comicbook conventions and I think I’m going to have to add more of them to my normally anime-heavy con circuit next year. Which reminds me, the every amazing Intervention Con is coming up in about a month! Last year it happened on the same weekend as SPX but still managed to be an excellent show, ESPECIALLY for a first year con. I’m lead to believe they’re running out of space already, so you’d better act fast if you haven’t already. Oh, and it looks like I’ll be crashing into the deep south for the first time in a long while with Anime Weekend Atlanta in a few months. That’ll also be exciting!

Well, today’s update is the page that I had ALMOST ready to post on Friday, but I had to leave for Baltimore’s OTAKON before I could finish. That was more frustrating than you know. However, the rest of the weekend went amazingly. Thank you to everyone who stopped by my table and said “hi.” It was good to see so many of you. And for those of you who missed me, I’ll be returning to Baltimore shortly for Baltimore Comic Con! And if you can’t make it to Baltimore there’s the extremely exciting Intervention coming up soon too. As much as I love the big cons like Otakon and Comic Con, the cons I’m more involved with (like Intervention) are even more enjoyable. I like running panels and being informative in ADDITION to all the usual meet-and-greet and commerce.

Something I’ve learned over the years going to cons and selling my art and comics: if you’re an artist, don’t be in the dealers room. Be in the artist alley. Despite the differences between dealers rooms and alleys diminishing over the years as more and more artists start doing this kind of thing professionally, the two spaces remain vastly different. And the people who walk through the rooms are very different with very different mindsets even when they’re the same person. I’m not sure exactly how to explain this phenomenon, but suffice it to say there’s a difference.

I think with more and more alley’s cracking down on the rampant proliferation of fanart, people who visit artist alleys expect more unique pieces, more original works, less commercial. Whatever the reason, I’ve found that people look for me in artist alleys. My place is in the alley. It’s where my people are. Thank you for looking for me.

Hello all out there in internet land! I’ve been away for a while, but no more! Finder’s Keepers returns to an active update schedule starting this friday, and will continue updating twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays until I go mad, burn out, or the chapter ends. This is happening, brace yourselves. It’s going to be amazing.

This week I give you not one, but TWO pages! Bahahaha! Don’t forget to click the “spread view” button in the upper left corner to see it in its completeness. This does mean, regrettably, that there won’t be a page next week. But as it’s my birthday next week, I figure this works out, a-ok.

And there you have it folks. Not a single missed update through the end of the chapter. Just like I said I would.

You haven’t heard much out of me the last couple of weeks as I’ve been very busy. I’ve been working hard on a really exciting project that I can’t say a whole lot about right now. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you all about it soon. However, I can tell you that this project has proven to me that I can work much more efficiently if I make some minor changes to how I go about things.

That being said I’m going to take a couple of weeks off to get the next bit of Finder’s prepped and good to go. The timing isn’t bad, really, as I’ve mentioned before there’ll be some fairly extensive updates to the website going on, and this way it won’t interfere with your reading! I’ll post some sketches and the like in the meantime, and I’ll aim to talk more down here in the box, so there should still be things to keep one entertained. Chapter 5 should start up just before Thanksgiving, on the 23rd, and we should go without interruptions until the chapter is over.

Incidentally, I did see last weeks episode of Castle, the one with the steampunk in it. It was a good episode (as always), and I felt the steampunk was fairly well done. Not too over-the-top and got the basics pretty solid. It was kinda funny in that I could point out a lot of the various props and tell you who made ‘em. Amused me greatly. I will say, however, that the best way to have a duel without any actual chance of you know accidentally killing the other dude? DON’T PUT THE GOD DAMN BALL IN THE GUN! Reenactment troops fire off blanks all the god damn time. Zero chance of accidental death. I swear, some people are just asking to get shot dead.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but this weekend I’m going up to Rockville, MD not to rockclimb as I usually do but rather to go to the convention we’ve all been waiting for for a long long time. That’s right, Intervention! For years I’ve heard people talk about how awesome it would be to have a webcomic convention. About how while it’s great that so many webcomics show up at Anime conventions, or how it’s nice of Anime Cons to have adopted webcomics as much as they have, webcomics aren’t anime, they aren’t normal comics, they aren’t even traditional indie comics and they really ought to have their own venues, trade shows, exhibitions, pink flamingos, and breakfast cereals. I’ve heard it for years. And now the time is upon us!

For those of you who haven’t looked into it already (and really, why wouldn’t you?), Intervention is the first internet-as-a-publishing-medium convention, and it’s really shaping up to what looks to be one hell of a show. The guest list is truly mind-blowing for a first year event, with heavy hitters such as Hawk, Mookie, Handyside, Guigar, Molly Crabapple, FRED GALLAGHER (whom I haven’t seen at a con since… like 2006), the ComicPress guys, Pete Abrams, and so many many more! Ben MOTHERFUCKING Bova was going to be there, but apparently has fallen ill and will be unable to attend. I hope he feels better soon. Bova (who is a superfamous science fiction writer for those of you who have never picked up a book) is collaborating with the infamous Rob Balder on a webcomic, for those curious. For a first year con to have names like these on it’s guest list? I mean really, why WOULDN’T you want to go? And of course, there’s an even better reason than to meet all these amazing people and learn their secrets in the hours and hours and hours of programming lined up…

Ok I’m going to stop selling this now. If I don’t stop, I’ll just go on and on forever. You have no reason to not attend what looks to be an amazing good time, and hopefully the start of something even more incredible. You should be there. I’m going to be there. With bells on. See if I’m kidding. Over the course of the weekend, I’ll be taking part in/running several panels including the aforementioned copyrights panel, my steampunk to cyberpunk history lesson, and even the rare Finder’s Keepers Q&A. If I can figure out how to make it work (because social media is a strange and alien beast to me) I’ll also be taking questions via Twitter from 2-3 on saturday (when the panel is). I think you just tweet your questions to GarthFT.

That’s all from me for now!

P.S. For those of you confused about how Cardinal is disbanding that Umbra, re-read page 9 of the Prologue.

Heh. Kind of a macabre title, I suppose, but fitting. (if you don’t get it, see previous post)

First off, I would like to thank ALL OF YOU kind and wonderful people for all of the supporting comments and emails. You guys are the greatest bunch of people, and I could not be luckier to have fans like you. Thank you all. You all have been so amazingly good and kind to me. I am going to try to be worthy of that kindness.

As such, I’m declaring an end to the general lethargy that has been prevalent throughout this site as of late. I’m updating again. Colors for this week’s page will be a little late (still getting back into the swing of things a touch), but the important part is that there is in fact a page. And more important than that is that I’m writing again. I haven’t said much on this front, but the truth is that a lot of the delays have been the result of me simply not writing script. I’ve “known” where the story is going, and what pitfalls and discoveries are awaiting our heroes for quite some time now, but I just haven’t had the script for it. That part of my brain has just been dead. But I started writing again the other week. The rest of this chapter is ready to go, just needs to be drawn. So we’re going full steam ahead again.

So here’s what I’m doing. There are roughly 10 weeks between now and Finder’s Keepers’ 2nd anniversary (Halloween). There are 8 pages left in chapter 4, and subsequently the end of volume 1. So, here’s the deal I’m making with all you amazing fans: you’ve been endlessly good to me, time for me to do the same. There will be NO MISSED UPDATES between now and the end of the chapter. With the anniversary you’ll be seeing a new website that’s been in the works to improve on some of the current site’s reading features, and to correct others that were great ideas but didn’t work out so well.

I can’t pinpoint a date, but you’ll also see Finder’s Keepers become available as a trade paperback sometime this fall (absolutely in time for Christmas). Sadly a lot of the details are dependent on the printers. But, it’s happening.

More immediately, I’m going to be at Baltimore Comic Con this weekend, table A220 (wherever that is, we’ll find out together!). I haven’t been to BCC since the early days of Comedity. It’ll be interesting to go back and be in a more traditional comic convention environment. I hope I’ll see some of you fantastic fans there.